..because the if statement, though the pattern matches, somehow passes regardless on every iteration. I can't figure out why. I tried looping through the 2nd file line by line and received the same result.

Arrays are not viable because these files are millions of rows.

How do I achieve the expected out put? Any help is appreciated. thanks, -s

Re: [Sanctioner] Need to capture all users in file1 not in file2
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Your approach is extremely unefficient, because it is reading the entire autolog file for each line in the other file.

Bill gave the right solution: read only once the autoloig file and store the identifiers of the autolog file into a hash, then read the other file and print out if the identifier is not found in the hash.

As for isolating the identifier, you could use the module suggested by Bill, but if you can't for some reason, then you could also use the split function rather than a complicated regex: